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Blankety Blanks
OPENING SPIEL: Bill: "(insert a sentence with a Blankety Blank). (insert celebrity's name), can you fill in the 'Blankety Blanks'?" Celebrity: "(insert full complete sentence)." Bob: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is/it's the Blankety Blanks! Starring Bill Cullen!" Blankety Blanks is the game show about solving puzzles & puns. Gameplay Two celebrity/contestant teams tried to solve puzzles and fill in "Blankety Blanks" on puns (for example, "When Richard Nixon spilled the coffee on Gerald Ford's lap, he said Pardon Me!"). To start, a category along with keywords and a puzzle was revealed. The puzzle had numbers (1-6) that hid six clues (all parts of sentences) to that puzzle. Host Cullen then pulled out a card from a rotating wheel of 100 situated next to him and placed it into an electronic reader, which chose at random one of the four players and a dollar amount from from $100 to $1,000 in $10 increments. BB Wheel.JPG|This wheel has cards for each player. BB 1.JPG|The Blankety Blank Board. The chosen player (either the contestant or the celebrity) in control picked a number in order to reveal a clue that would help him/her identify the mystery subject; unlike some celebrity-civilian games of the period, the partner could not assist the contestant or celebrity playing at the moment. A correct answer won the team the designated money amount, but an incorrect answer (or no answer at all) meant the game continued as Cullen pulled another card, allowing another player (possibly the same one from the previous turn) to take a chance. BB Players.JPG|Players area. bblankboard.jpg|The board partially played now. bblankboard2.jpg|A Blankety Blank: The hurricane that hit the pretzel factory was a real ____. Can you figure this one out? Play continued until the puzzle was solved, at which point the team who solved the puzzle got a chance to keep the money by solving the Blankety Blank in a pun; in this part of the game, the celebrity and the contestant were allowed to work together. Each correct Blankety Blank solve gave the opposing contestant a strike, with three strikes eliminating them from further play. If a Blankety Blank guess was incorrect, no strikes were given and the amount that was played for was held until that team solved another puzzle. Contestants stayed on the show until they got three strikes. Format Changes In the pilots, letters were used instead of numbers in the main game. Unlike the numbers used in the series, the letters shown were used in the revealed sentence fragment (for example, "Z" may conceal "THAT CRAZY LADY"). Beginning on May 19, 1975, the format was changed somewhat to remove the key word from each front-game clue (the overall header, that is). The dollar values now ranged from $100-$750 and any money won from solved puzzles went into that team's bank, which could be won again by solving the Blankety Blank. The Strikes were removed, and the game was simply played until one team reached $2,500 winning the game. blank1.jpg Trivia The game was similar to Body Language. Blankety Blanks was also the name of Match Game in Australia. The British Match Game had a similar title, albeit without the S. Music Bob Cobert The pilot theme was later reused on Get Rich Quick!, while the series theme was later reused on Double Talk. Studio Elysee Theater, New York City, NY Links *[http://www.game-show-utopia.net/blanketyblanks/blanketyblanks.htm Blankety Blanks at Game Show Utopia] *[http://www.curtalliaume.com/blankety.html Blankety Blanks at Game Shows '75] *[http://userdata.acd.net/ottinger/cullen/tvseries/blank.html Blankety Blanks at The Bill Cullen Home Page] YouTube Videos February 10, 1975 (Pilot #3, with Soupy Sales & Anita Gillette): Parts 1 and 2 Category:Puzzle Category:ABC shows Category:Network shows Category:Network daytime shows Category:Daytime shows Category:Bob Stewart-Sande Stewart Productions Category:Sony Pictures Television Category:Short-Running Category:Flops Category:30 Minute Game Shows Category:1975 premieres Category:1975 endings